Finding Your Worth through Jesus Christ
2024 BYU Women’s Conference
Friday, May 3, 2024
I have five girls between the ages of 20 and 30. Two of them are my own daughters. The other three are daughters-in-law, but I still call them my girls. They are capable, strong women, and they have a lot of opinions. So just imagine what family dinner looks like at our house—the discussion is lively and passionate, and we don’t shy away from the hard questions. We wrestle with them together. Our understanding has increased because of this.
Perhaps you have conversations like these in your families as well.
One of the topics we talk about quite frequently is the role of women—in sports, in politics, and in religion. I wish you could sit around the table with us. These are conversations filled with a lot of emotion and deep questions, and they have led me to the scriptures time and time again.
I have learned that most often the answers to hard questions won’t be found in the world but in the word. And if we wonder about the value of women, perhaps the best way to find our place in His plan is to actually spend time learning from women who lived up to their covenant privilege and walked in faithfulness.
In quiet moments of deep pondering, I often open up worn pages of beloved scripture. The stories of women in scripture are not filled with passive bystanders. Instead, these stories define difference-makers who were courageous, empowered, and crucial to moving God’s plan forward. In the most critical of situations, their role was often to lead out with testimony, instill belief, and build up the kingdom of God.
Perhaps this is a conversation you are also having with the important women in your life—your daughters or sisters or friends. I wish we could spend an afternoon studying together the way I sometimes do with my girls. Maybe we would begin by asking, “What is our worth and value in the eyes of Jesus Christ?”
I might begin by telling you a story that wasn’t one of my best moments. It happened a couple of days after I substituted for a Sunday School class. It had been a great lesson—not because of me but because of them—life changing, actually. And I couldn’t stop thinking about it—about something a couple of boys had drawn on a white piece of paper. By Tuesday, when I still couldn’t forget the lesson, I decided I should return to the church and see if the papers from the lesson were still in the garbage can. So I reached out to the bishop to ask if I could borrow his keys. He quickly explained how the papers wouldn’t be in the garbage can in the classroom anymore. “Where would they be?” I asked him. “In the dumpster outside the church,” was his reply.
Now, I don’t normally climb into dumpsters, but those papers were of great importance to me. I had to have them. So I walked out to the garage, grabbed a rake and a ladder, and drove to the church. When I got there, I climbed up on the dumpster and sat on the edge, thinking to myself how ridiculous this was but dead set on finding those papers. I hovered there on the brown metal edge, gathering courage, trying to grasp hold of my brave. After checking the bottom of the dumpster for small, gray, moving animals, I jumped in, knee-deep in garbage, and started tearing open plastic bags. It was in the third full bag that I found them—seven pieces of white paper folded in half. Six of the papers had the drawings you would imagine if someone asked you to draw out the plan of salvation—they had circles and arrows and life and death. But one paper had just one word, written in bold, black letters across the blank, white paper: Jesus.
God’s plan from the beginning.
We know His importance to the plan. How do we discover ours?
I want to think today about something that has taken place at this pulpit over the last two days. I don’t know how many of you have sat in this stadium and listened to the words from this pulpit, but many of them have been about the women we read about in scripture. In fact, for one of those women, I will be the fifth witness from this pulpit this weekend. And as we think about that, it makes me think of an invitation that maybe we all should take to go home and read about these women in our scriptures. As I teach you about some of these women, I hope you won’t think so much about who they are but whose they are. And what was their purpose in His plan?
My inclination is to start at the very beginning, in the story that begins in Genesis with a woman that some people call the mother of all living: Eve. After six days of creation, man was created, but he wasn’t meant to live alone. So God created a fitting helper for him.
This is what President Russell M. Nelson defines as the culminating act of all creation: the creation of woman!
“All the purposes of the world and all that was in the world would be brought to naught without woman—a keystone in the priesthood arch of creation. …
“… Eve came as a partner, to build and to organize the bodies of mortal men.”
I can’t help but think of Eve, standing there on the precipice, gathering courage, trying to grasp hold of her brave. Did she know her choice would bring death and sickness and children and thorns and all of the blessings and trials that come with life on earth? Did she know about the chance for wandering, for visiting the dark places, for experiencing the ache of discouragement? Did she understand about the separation from God that was coming? There were lessons that could not be learned in heaven. And so Eve made the choice to come to mortality, to leave the presence of God for a time, to learn wisdom, to become. She was a daughter who was called and chosen to fulfill an important role in God’s plan.
We call Eve’s decision brave. We speak of her courage.
How critical was her purpose in the Father’s plan?
She is the mother of all living.
She delivered man into mortality.
In the eyes of the Lord, Eve was valued.
But her story is not the only one critical to our understanding of our own value and our worth.
Let’s continue our study by turning to the pages of the New Testament, to Luke 1. Here we will meet the virgin whose name was Mary. This is another critical moment in God’s plan. Have you ever noticed that when the angel came to describe how Jesus will be delivered to the earth the first person He visited was the young handmaiden? In those first moments he explained her role in God’s plan.
How critical was her purpose?
“And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.
“And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
“He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest. …
“And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”
Mary is known for delivering the Son of Man into the world. In the eyes of the Lord, she was beloved.
How important was her purpose in the Father’s plan?
Now, let’s turn to the book of John. In John 4, we meet a woman at a well. John 4:4 explains how the Savior “must needs go through Samaria.” For some reason, it was important for Him to go to that place. He stopped at a well, and the scriptures tell us it was the middle of the day.
In those days, the time when wells were most frequented would be in the early hours of the day. It’s cooler then, so the women would go to obtain water in the morning. And what do women do when they gather? They talk. That’s where all the business of the city takes place. But for some reason, the woman in this chapter goes to the well in the hottest hours of the day, when few others would likely be there. This helps us to know something about this woman. It seems she doesn’t want company.
When she gets there, Jesus is sitting at that well, and it’s hot, and He asks her for a drink. An entire conversation happens in which they talk about the water she has come to obtain—the ordinary task that she’s there for. And then they talk about her husband and who’s not her husband, and how many husbands she’s had up to that moment. And in a particularly vulnerable and intimate discussion, they talk through the personal details of her life. And then the conversation turns to worship, and Jesus says three words that capture my interest every time: “Woman, believe me.”
I can’t help but wonder how long it has been since someone addressed her with a title of respect in her life: “Woman.” And then He asks her what she knows about the Messiah, and she begins to tell Him what she has been taught. In verse 25 she explains, “I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.”
Have you ever felt inadequate?
Are there places in your heart that are empty or filled with doubt?
Is there something that you long for that the world cannot satisfy?
Where is the well that you visit daily?
I love how the Lord responds to this woman sitting at a well who probably had similar questions in her heart. In the verse just following her statement that a Messiah would come, He simply replied, “I that speak unto thee am he.”
Bible scholars will tell us that in His mortal life, this was the Savior’s first public acknowledgment of His mission and ministry. This woman became the first witness of who Jesus was and what He had come to do. An unnamed woman at a well in Samaria. Of all the people He could have told, out of all the places He could have made that announcement, for some reason He “must needs go to Samaria.” He chose to tell this Samaritan woman by a well side first. In the eyes of the Lord, she was seen.
How critical was her purpose?
“The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men,
“Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ? …
“And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman, which testified. …
“And [they] said, … we believe: … for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.”
The woman at the well left behind her waterpot to testify of the deliverance and redemption that would come through Christ the Messiah. She became a gatherer, one of the first missionaries.
Consider this for a minute:
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The person who set the plan of salvation in motion was a woman: Eve.
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The person who was chosen to deliver the Son of Man into the world was a woman: Mary.
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The first recorded person to hear Jesus Christ declare His mission as Messiah come to save the world was an unnamed Samaritan woman sitting by a well.
How critical is the role of women in God’s plan?
What is our worth and value in the eyes of Jesus Christ?
Perhaps the next place we might turn in our conversation would be to John 20.
This is one of my favorite chapters in all of scripture, and it begins like this: “The first … of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was [still] dark.” We’ve all experienced dark days. In Mary’s grief, she came to the place where she knew she would find Jesus. She came to mourn.
As she is sitting there, weeping, someone comes, and she mistakes Him for the gardener—which I actually love because the last time Mary saw Jesus, He was hanging on a cross in the form of a Savior. But in this moment, she assumes He is a gardener. And what is the job of a gardener? To grow things, to help them increase, to help them progress. And this is what Mary is about to do through Christ. Grow, increase in understanding, and progress.
The Lord says to her, “Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?” And thinking He’s the gardener, she asks where He thinks they’ve taken Him, and Jesus says to her in verse 16, “Mary.” And she turns to Him and replies, “Rabboni; … Master.” In the eyes of the Lord, she was known.
Do you find it interesting that the first person to see the risen Lord was a woman?
Consider the time period in which they lived. This is a time when women did not have a voice. No one in the first century would have chosen a woman to be the first witness of the Resurrection, but He did. The first person the Lord chose to show Himself to is Mary from Magdala, who became the first witness of the risen Lord. Why? What was He trying to teach us?
How important is the purpose of women in God’s plan?
Eve as mother was valued.
Mary as deliverer was beloved.
The unnamed woman, as the first witness to whom the Savior testified of His Messiahship, was seen.
Mary of Magdala, as the first witness of the risen Lord, was known.
In every one of these instances, we discover a woman whose place was pivotal in the moving forward of things. And maybe what we lack in words for describing our place in God’s plan might become more clearly defined by our living of it. Because we too find ourselves in a critical moment in God’s plan.
This is not a time for sitting still. It is a time for leading out with testimony, for instilling belief, for developing a bedrock understanding of the doctrine of Christ. There is a precedent within God’s plan that I can’t ignore. In the most critical moments of God’s story, I see women.
Not just present.
Purposed.
Perhaps you wonder about your place, about your purpose, about your role. I am reminded of a woman who actually asked a question similar to this in trying to understand her own place. We often speak of the 14-year-old boy who took his question to the Lord in a grove of trees and received an answer that changed the course of his life. I hope we also remember the 26-year-old woman who was unexperienced in life yet given extraordinary responsibilities. What was the Lord’s counsel to Emma? From Doctrine and Covenants 25 we immediately recognize our worth and value in God’s plan:
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We are daughters in His kingdom. Daughters. Which means we have a place in His household and a seat at His table.
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We are called. He has a work for us to do, both individually and collectively.
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We are chosen. We are set apart by God for special responsibilities.
I love how revolutionary Emma’s role was. At a time when women did not preach or teach, Emma was set apart to teach scripture and encourage the Church. And this wasn’t a role given only to Emma. At the end of section 25, the Lord tells us, “This is my voice unto all.”
What is the value and worth of women in God’s story? Here are some truths that feel particularly relevant to me:
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From Eve, mother of all living, we begin to understand the sacred purpose of deliverer.
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From Mary, handmaiden of the Lord, we begin to understand the sacred purpose of sacrifice.
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From the woman at the well, we begin to learn the sacred purpose of gatherer.
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From Mary Magdalene, we learn the sacred purpose of witness.
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From Emma, we learn the sacred purpose of ministering, expounding scripture, and encouraging the Church.
Each daughters.
Called of God.
Elect ladies.
Women who remind us that our purpose is critical to bringing about His.
In all generations of time there have been women with courage, testimony, and conviction. Our time is not different. All around us there are women who are righteous, articulate, distinct, and different—women of strength, conversion, conviction, leadership, and wisdom.
You are one of those women.
His prophet calls to each of us: Rise to your full stature. Fulfill the measure of your creation. Prepare the world for the Second Coming of the Lord.
It is an invitation that will not happen overnight. Becoming is a process. Every day better. Stalwart strength gathered over time.
God needs you. He needs your voice. He knows you are a woman with spiritual power to change the world—able to carry on despite difficult circumstance.
The hope of Israel.
Here now because He knows your capacity for negotiating these latter days. He sees you—your desire to develop a bedrock understanding of the doctrine of Christ. How you are learning to access the power of God. How you call upon the powers of heaven to protect and strengthen. He knows your longing to become a converted, covenant-keeping woman. He knows how the Spirit will magnify your influence in an unprecedented way.
We are women of the covenant, endowed with power from on high. Do we understand the magnitude of what He is bestowing upon us? Paul reminds us that “it is God which worketh in [us] … to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Mormon teaches something similar: “Wherefore, he worketh in me to do according to his will.” In Alma we read, “I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things.”
As covenant daughters, we draw upon an endowment of God’s power. His power within us enables us to rise above our own capabilities. His power can mend or repair our weakness, refresh our life, give us strength against the attacks of the adversary and stronger hope, trust, and confidence. His power within us will increase our ability to overcome trials, heartache, and mortal weakness. This endowment of His power will transform us into the best version of ourselves we can bring to this season, increase our capacity, and enable us to become daughters in the kingdom and elect in the eyes of God. This endowment will enable us to commune with our Father more deeply through prayer and better hear and respond to the Spirit of the Lord and the specific promptings that will come as dews from heaven to protect and guide our families. Our covenant relationship grants us greater access to the active compassion of His mercy, the enabling strength of His grace, increased wisdom from on high, and the protection of angel armies. As women of the covenant, clothed in the garment of the holy priesthood, we can draw upon His power daily. If we choose, we can put on Jesus Christ as a daily reminder of this endowment. Covenant relationship gives us greater access to our Father, who is all knowing and all powerful.
If we want to understand our worth in the eyes of the Lord, we need to remember this: We are seen. We are known. We are loved. And we are valued.
Just like those who went before, there are giants among us. They are recognizable as women who testify boldly of motherhood, of sacrifice, of gathering. They are witnesses of Him, ministers, expounders of scripture, and encouragers of the Church.
One of those giants was a woman by the name of Ardeth Kapp—a woman who had a profound influence on my understanding of my worth and my value in the eyes of Jesus Christ. I remember sitting next to her at a dinner some years ago. I introduced myself to her, and she asked what years I had been in the Young Women program. When I responded with the dates, she wrapped her arms around me and said, “You are one of my girls.” I was 53 years old. It is one of the most endearing things someone has ever told me. It was one of the first things that came to mind when I received this calling. I don’t just have five girls anymore. I can’t stop thinking and praying about my girls, who now fill the entire world. As I think of them, this conversation feels particularly relevant to me. I want them to know that their worth and value will not come from accolades or titles; it will come from Him. We will find our purpose as we bring to light His.
We live in the latter days. Each of us stand at the precipice, gathering courage, trying to grasp hold of our brave.
We must remember that we belong here among the great ones—the givers of life, the vessels of sacrifice, the testifiers of redemption, the witnesses of Christ, the keepers of the covenant.
We are those women.
This is our time.
I testify of our inherent worth and value in the eyes of the Lord and in the work of Jesus Christ. May we live up to our privilege is my prayer. I bear testimony to you that Jesus Christ lives. I know He lives, and I know He sees us, and I know He knows us, and I know He needs us. And I bear testimony of that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.